Ristorante Paradiso: Moe Gentlemen in Glasses

Ristorante Paradiso Anime Spring 2009 🙂

Genres: Slice-of-Life, Drama

Synopsys: 21 year-old Nicoletta leaves her grandparents’ home in the countryside to work in Rome at a restaurant owned by her estranged mother’s lover. But something sets the popular and elegant Casetta Dell’orso apart from its rivals: the entire restaurant is staffed by older gentlemen wearing glasses (as per her mother’s preference). Thrown into this adult world, Nicoletta must try to find personal and professional stability – things that become increasingly difficult to achieve as she falls under the spell of Casetta Dell’orso.

Published by Kitsune

16 thoughts on “Ristorante Paradiso: Moe Gentlemen in Glasses”

Ooh, the European theme has stirred my interest. (: I checked out their official website and yes indeed, the artwork is definitely different. And the manga pages you posted up seem to carry this almost… unique quality that tells you that the setting is in Europe. Or maybe it’s just me. Watching a show about restaurants sounds good to me.

A show about restaurants might be fun, but, based on the manga I read, it seems to be very heavy on dialogue without much cooking or other restaurant oriented activities. The story is about people dealing with various personal problems at different stages of life.

I like the style, but agree that some illustrations could have been better drawn. If you watch the trailer or visit the official website, you’ll see that the character design of anime is somewhat different from manga. Although the manga was published in Manga Erotics F and does have some resemblance to Antique Bakery, this seems to be slice-of-life rather than yaoi series. We’ll see how it will turn out 🙂

Mmm, the gourmet in me is intrigued. If this turns out to be a clean slice-of-lifer I’m game, although since this was (as you wrote earlier) a part of Manga Erotics F (no idea what this is, but the title speaks volumes) it may not be my cuppa.

Just out of curiosity, does the culinary aspect of this series play a key role or is it more of an incidental element?

I think it might be good slice-of-life anime, at least based on the manga I’ve seen. While Manga Erotics F publishes manga of a certain content primarily, not all series fit that category: Ristorante is such an exception.

Based on what I’ve seen in the manga so far, culinary aspect does play a role, but less than in Yakitate and maybe even less than in Antique Bakery. However, we have to keep in mind that anime often deviates from manga and may emphasize different things. ( Don’t expect this type of thing though 😛 ) Thus, we’ll have to see a few episodes to decide. I don’t know if I’ll watch this anime, but it is definitely worth checking it out 🙂